The Story of some Light Fixtures
I bought this house because it is Craftsman. I knew I wanted a Craftsman and enough room to plant a magnolia tree. Other than that it was all a learning curve.
One day I was at the house for some inspections and I began taking pictures. There was a chandelier in the dining room that I hadn’t really “noticed” before. That day, for some reason, it stood out to me. There was also a matching set of sconces over the fireplace. Covered in grime, dust, and cobwebs, there was something about them, so I began investigating.
I soon discovered they were part of a set manufactured by Moe Bridges and they were original to the house, along with all the door hardware, and a strikingly similar polychrome finish to the original brick of the fireplace and tile hearth. It wasn’t a mistake that they all matched. The only missing part was that the living room chandelier had been replaced with a 1990s-2000s era ceiling fan. Ugh.
My investigations brought me to an eBay seller (The Old Above) who repaired, restored, and re-wired antique light fixtures. This also brought me to talk to Bo Sullivan who used to have a historic design business housed in Rejuvenation before the Williams Sonoma acquisition. He now sells antique “museum-quality” wallpaper, they are exquisite. Between the two I found some sense of wholeness out of the situation.
I contacted the eBay seller after discovering he had a set of the fixtures for sale!! But I didn’t need the entire set, I only really needed the chandelier for the living room. He was remiss to break it up, but we worked something out. My electrician removed all the fixtures still in the house, I had them expertly packed up and shipped to the eBay seller, they arrived unharmed, and he restored and rewired them. I purchased the missing chandelier and another fixture from the set: a two lamp sconce to put in what I refer to as the “vestibule” between the two ground floor bedrooms that had no light. All fixtures came to me beautifully refreshed and intact. I was elated.
The only “hiccup” in this transaction was that the chandelier needed a new finial. Since I sent the eBay seller my other chandelier, he was able to use that one for having a new finial cast for the other one and was polychrome finished. It is a perfect match.
A little while later, after all this hubbub and having talked to some neighbors, I discovered that the original living room chandelier had remained in the house!! But where was it?! Someone mentioned that the sellers, who were the relatives of the deceased owner, basically opened up the house to anyone to come from the neighborhood to take antiques and such. Yes, I was fairly aghast. The chandelier ended up for sale at the “shop around the corner.” It is STILL THERE last I checked!
Now, I have a perfectly functioning living room chandelier that matches the set that was in my house. I have no need for another living room chandelier, especially one that hasn’t been rewired and restored. But there is something inside of me that wants to save that chandelier. It belongs in this house, even if it just sits in a closet until I die (or leave). The fact that nobody has bought it (AFAIK) in more than a decade makes me feel like it needs to come back.
In writing this post, I looked up some Moe Bridges fixtures for sale on The Old Above shop. Currently there is a six-piece set of fixtures for nearly $4000. I only have five pieces of my set. But I know what they all look like thanks to Bo Sullivan, which I realize now I haven’t mentioned how he fits into this story yet. I had emailed Bo looking for information about my fixtures and he knew exactly what they were and scanned in a page from an original Moe Bridges catalog to send me.
The last piece to this story was to buy the necessary hand painted amber light bulbs: globes for downward facing fixtures and flame tips for upward. I bought the entire stock that a store had onhand at the time. I still have some left.